Why India is justifiably perceived as the most unsafe place for women?

Deprivation, under nourishment, stunted opportunities for growth, lack of law enforcement safeguards and scanty representation in public offices – all lead to a non-conducive environment for females.

Many Indians disapproved of the recent Thomson Reuters Foundation perception survey that pegged India to be the most dangerous country for women because of high risk of sexual violence and being forced into slave labour. How India could surpass countries like Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia and Saudi Arabia to be the most unsafe place for its women was the general grudge. However, barely a month after the survey, the Bihar shelter home horror has yet again reminded the country how heinous its society can be with its girls. It is not just violence: deprivation, under nourishment, stunted opportunities for growth, lack of law enforcement safeguards and scanty representation in public offices – all lead to a non-conducive environment for females. These five charts amply show why violence is not the only factor that makes the sixth largest economy unsafe for women.

1. Undernourishment: A high prevalence of anaemia among women of productive age is a glaring indication of how women’s health has been ignored over decades. Half of women aged between 15 and 49 years are anaemic in India. Anaemia is caused by lack of haemoglobin in the blood. Women of reproductive age are susceptible to iron-deficiency anaemia that is treatable with change in diet and iron supplements. We are hardly better than Pakistan when compared with peers in the subcontinent and the BRICS bloc. Similar is the case of prevalence of contraceptive methods among women (aged 15-49). Only 53% women of reproductive in India have access to any method of contraception – the lowest in the BRICS and the second lowest in the subcontinent.

2. Maternal Health: In 2015, India recorded 45,000 maternal deaths – ten-fold than that recorded in China. India’s maternal mortality ratio – the number of mothers dying per 100,000 live births - is in line with Pakistan and Bangladesh.

3. Women in work force participation: India’s growth, while being faster than its BRICS peers, has not been fairly gender-inclusive. Women in India constitute only a quarter of its labour force. In its neighbourhood, India is only a tad better than Pakistan. For every one Indian woman working, there are almost two Chinese women constituting the country’s work force.

Unsafe working environment (despite prevention of sexual harassment guidelines since 1997), undertaking unpaid domestic chores along with raising family and gender discrimination have made sure India has one of the most skewed gender participation in the work force.

4. Women representation in parliament: While we have had a woman prime minister, woman president and currently have a woman external affairs minister and a woman defence minister – we have largely had a gender non-inclusive legislature. At 12%, India is one of the laggards among its peers in women representation in the Parliament. A democratic India has half the women representation that is found in Chinese legislature. The situation is not very encouraging even in case of judiciary where as a nation we are cheering just the first instance of three sitting women judges in the 68-years history of the country’s Supreme Court.

Source: Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), 20165. No Sexual Offenders Registry: Despite the repeated gory crimes against women and young girls, India does not yet have a common database of sexual offenders. Sex offender registration and notification systems have been established around the world over the past twenty years. Beginning with the US in 1994, 18 more countries have since enacted some form of sex offender registration laws. These countries are Argentina, Australia, Bermuda, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Jamaica, Jersey, Kenya, Maldives, Malta, Pitcairn Islands, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Trinidad & Tobago, UK and the US (Source: US Dept of Justice, April 2014).